JESSA FAIRBROTHER

Resident December 2023

Jessa Fairbrother is a British artist with a background in photography, embroidery and performance. She has over 15 years experience using her own body as material. Initially training as an actor in the 1990s she also completed an MA in Photographic Studies at the University of Westminster (2010). This experience enabled her to crystallise visually how artwork and audience collide - a body that encounters the work is part of activating the work itself. Developing her needle-as-pricking-tool in relation to the body and feelings, she draws on archives to make her own ‘preposterous histories’*, frequently embroidering traditional photographic prints or simply hand-marking images with the point of the needle as a method of drawing. Jessa is represented by The Photographers’ Gallery, London and Anzenberger Gallery, Vienna.

*Mieke Bal

"My practice is underpinned by a deep need to visualise complex daughter-mother love and rectify what is missing in the canon. I think these are some of the great untold love stories.

I have been working at Domus Artist Residency to investigate my own inherited memories spanning 80 years and two continents. This has given me time and space without the normal interruptions of daily living to concentrate and unravel ideas about severance and the weight of being a woman who is the last of this maternal line. The work I am carrying out here revolves around my grandmother’s dress - one of the only items of clothing my mother kept - in which I perform with the item of clothing, testing out the weight of my ancestors. I am also adorning a blanket with a text about being held by my mother, and the hole that remains now she is no longer here. I perform by stitching each letter on with care.

As my mediums cross photography, drawing, performance and stitch. I have also recently been interspersing archive images with contemporary photographs, literally drawing shapes between these as psychic spaces. This is illuminating, visualising time and space between women.
I am particularly interested in the gaze of the daughter - where is this honoured in the history of art and how can this be given due reverence?

Working primarily with photography, performance, drawing and sewing,  my interest is in an inner, emotional landscape; my practice utilises the external body as a site for artist enquiry and self-expression.

I have recently been interspersing archive images with contemporary photographs, literally drawing shapes between these as psychic spaces while on my residency at Domus. This is illuminating, visualising time and space between women in my own history. A confrontation with the symbolic, mythical visualisation of Mother is an extremely rich space to deepen this work, invigorating my practice. What I am trying to explore is the visualisation of mother-daughter love, how to find it in the history of art and rectify what is missing. I am interested in looking from the position of the daughter looking for the mother.

Women’s bodies are tuning forks, their stories chiming with the core of the earth that has been enclosed and colonised, piece by piece. We photograph ourselves and in doing so we photograph the landscape. And our grandmothers.

It is very powerful to be here and make work without everyday distractions. The atmosphere is special and it gives me the time for my thoughts to unravel to a deep level. This is incredibly important as an artist."